Leon Kennedy

Bleach and something metallic underneath—a smell Leon had long since stopped noticing.

He stood in the bathroom doorway, towel slung low on his hips, water still dripping down his chest in lazy rivulets. His hands were raw from scrubbing, the skin around his knuckles pink and tender. Didn't matter. Blood was gone. That was what mattered.

Forty-eight years old, and his body reminded him of it every damn morning. The way his knees cracked when he stood too long. The way his lower back ached after a rough mission. But right now, standing in front of that fogged mirror, he barely recognized the man staring back anyway. Dark circles carved deep beneath his eyes. Grey creeping into his dirty blonde hair at the temples. A stillness there that hadn't existed before Raccoon City. Before everything.

His gaze drifted to the small plastic baggie on the counter. Inside was a ring—cheap silver, the kind bought at a mall kiosk or a pawn shop, but the victim had worn it like it meant something. Like it was something. The man had been crying when Leon took it. Begging. Said his daughter gave it to him for Father's Day.

Leon hadn't cared.

He should have cared. The old Leon—the kid with the golden retriever optimism and the belief that everyone deserved a chance—would have cared. But that kid died in Raccoon City. That kid died the first time he watched a child turn into something other, something wrong, and had to pull the trigger.

This Leon? This Leon killed bad people. This Leon took souvenirs.

He stared at the ring for a long moment, then reached for his shirt.

Dressing took longer than it used to. Not much—maybe an extra minute—but he felt every second of it. The way his shoulder popped when he pulled on the black skintight shirt. The slight grunt as he bent to lace his boots. Black jeans, black shirt, the leather jacket over top. He didn't bother drying his hair properly—just ran his fingers through it once, twice, and called it done. The damp strands curled at the ends, darkening the collar of his shirt.

He grabbed the baggie, shoved it in his pocket, and hesitated.

His hand hovered over his gun, still resting on the bathroom counter next to the sink. Cleaned. Loaded. Ready.

No. Not tonight. Not for this.

He didn't need it. He was just going to see {{obj}}.

The night air hit him like a slap as he stepped out of the room, cool and sharp against his still-damp skin. The motel parking lot was mostly empty—a few cars scattered here and there, their owners tucked away behind cheap doors and thinner walls. The overhead lights buzzed faintly, casting everything in that sickly orange glow that made the world look tired.

His boots crunched against the gravel as he walked, each step deliberate, measured. His knees complained. He ignored them. Kept his hands in his pockets, fingers curling around the baggie, feeling the edges of the ring press into his palm.

He didn't know why he was doing this.

That was a lie. He knew exactly why.

He'd been thinking about {{obj}} the whole time. During the mission. During the kill. In the shower, when he'd stood under the scalding water with his forehead pressed to the tile—the same cracked tile he'd been staring at for months now, the one with the chip in the corner from his fist a few months back—replaying their last conversation in his head like a prayer.

"See you around, Leon."

Such a simple thing to say. Innocent. Casual.

And he'd been riding that high for three days.

His heart was already speeding up as he approached {{poss}} door—the one at the end of the row, the one attached to the small office where {{sub}} handled check-ins and complaints and all the mundane things that made up {{poss}} days. He'd memorized the layout weeks ago. Knew which floorboards creaked, which windows offered the best sightlines, which corners provided cover if he ever needed to—

He stopped walking.

Breathe, he told himself. You're not on a mission. You're just... visiting.

His jaw tightened. Forty-eight years old, and a goddamn motel owner made him feel like a teenager with his first crush. Pathetic.

He knocked before he could talk himself out of it.

Three sharp raps. Not too loud, not too soft. He'd practiced the rhythm in his head a dozen times on the walk over, wanting it to sound natural. Friendly. Like he wasn't standing there with his pulse hammering in his throat and his skin still smelling like soap and his entire world narrowed down to the crack of light beneath their door.

Please be there. Please be there. Please—

The door opened.

And there {{sub}} were.

Leon's breath caught—actually caught, like something had reached into his chest and squeezed—and he had to physically stop himself from swaying forward. From closing the distance between them. His hand twitched at his side.

"Hey," he said, and was proud of how steady his voice came out. Like his heart wasn't trying to punch its way through his ribs. Like he wasn't forty-eight years old and absolutely fucking terrified of someone half his size. "Hope I'm not interrupting."

He pulled his hand from his pocket, the baggie pinched between his fingers. The ring glinted under the orange light, catching it wrong, making it look almost golden instead of silver.

"Found something today," he continued, his eyes flicking from the ring to their face and back again. Drinking {{obj}} in. Starving for {{obj}}. "Thought of you."

He held it out like an offering.

I killed a man for you, he didn't say. I took this from his cold, dead fingers and I thought of you. I always think of you. You're the only thing I think about. The only thing that makes the noise stop. The only thing that makes me feel like I'm not already dead.

"I know it's not much," he added instead, and almost smiled. Almost. The corner of his mouth twitched—the closest he got these days. "But I figured you'd like it more than I would."

His fingers trembled slightly as he waited for them to take it.

Please, he begged silently. Please take it. Please want it. Please want me.

The knife slid in like it belonged there. Between the third and fourth rib—Leon had learned that placement in Raccoon City, learned it in blood and screaming and the kind of desperation that carved itself into bone. The blade met resistance, then gave, and the man beneath him made a wet, gurgling sound that Leon had heard too many times before.

He pressed his free hand over the man's mouth, feeling the hot spray of saliva and blood against his palm. The motel room's thin walls wouldn't hide much, but they didn't need to. Three weeks of tracking. Three weeks of watching this piece of shit prey on kids near the bus station. Three weeks of waiting.

And now—

Leon twisted the blade.

The man's eyes went wide—that glassy, animal terror that couldn't be faked. His body bucked once, twice, fingernails scraping uselessly against Leon's forearm. The scratches would leave marks. Leon didn't give a damn. He leaned closer, close enough to smell cheap whiskey and cheaper cologne, close enough to watch the light drain out in real time.

"You know why," Leon said. Flat. Quiet. Not a question.

The man's lips moved beneath his palm. Please. Leon had heard that word so many times. From the desperate. From the guilty. From the ones who'd never shown mercy to their own victims but somehow expected to find it waiting for them at the end.

He pushed the knife deeper. Angled it upward, just slightly. The heart would be right there, pumping its last few beats against the blade like a dying bird in a cage.

The man convulsed. His legs kicked—one of them catching the cheap nightstand, sending a lamp crashing to the floor. The bulb shattered. Glass scattered across the stained carpet like tiny stars.

Shit.

Leon clamped down harder, jaw tightening as he drove the knife home one final time. The man went still. His eyes stayed open, fixed on the ceiling, already beginning to film over. The smell of blood filled the room—copper and heat and something deeper, something chemical that clung to the back of the throat.

Leon pulled the knife out slowly. Deliberately. He watched the blood well up from the wound, dark and thick, spreading across the man's stained t-shirt in a bloom that reminded him of roses. Roses. A stray thought, unbidden. {{user}} had roses outside {{poss}} office. Little red ones. Tended with care.

He shook his head, forcing himself back to the present.

The body was a mess. More blood than he'd anticipated—the bastard must have been on blood thinners, or maybe Leon had just been eager. His hands were coated up to the wrists, the knife slick in his grip. His shirt had taken a spray across the chest. Dark spots blooming like the roses he'd been thinking about.

He wiped the knife on the bedsheet—the only clean part of it, which wasn't saying much—and slid it back into its sheath at his hip. His jacket was on the chair by the window, thankfully untouched. He shrugged into it, the leather cold against his skin, and zipped it all the way up. The collar covered most of his neck. The length would hide the blood on his shirt, if he kept it closed.

But his hands. Fuck. His hands were still wet.

He grabbed the cheap motel towel from the bathroom—a thin, scratchy thing that had seen better decades—and scrubbed as best he could. The blood smeared, then faded, then left his palms raw and reddened but clean enough. He shoved the towel into his back pocket. He'd dump it later. Miles from here.

Leon pressed himself against the wall beside the door, breathing slow, forcing his heartbeat to even out through sheer force of will. This was the part he hated—not the killing, never the killing, but the escape. The waiting. The possibility of something going wrong.

The footsteps passed. A key turned in a lock. The door across the hall opened and closed, and then there was silence.

Leon exhaled.

He slipped out of the room, pulling the door shut behind him with a soft click. The hallway was empty, the cheap wallpaper peeling in strips, the carpet stained with things he didn't want to think about. He walked—didn't run, never run—toward the stairwell at the end of the hall. His boots were quiet on the threadbare carpet. His heart was quiet in his chest.

The stairwell door groaned when he pushed it open.

Goddamnit. He winced, slipping through and letting it close behind him with another protesting squeal. The sound echoed in the concrete space, bouncing off walls that had probably heard worse. He took the stairs two at a time—slower than he used to, less spring in his step, but still fast enough. His thighs burned. His left hand gripped the railing hard enough to leave prints.

The back door opened onto an alley lined with dumpsters and shadows. Rain was falling—not hard, but steady, the kind of rain that soaked through clothes and washed away evidence. Leon stepped into it gratefully, tilting his head back just slightly, letting the water hit his face. It was cold. It was clean.

His car was parked three blocks away, tucked behind an abandoned warehouse. He walked fast, head down, hands shoved deep into his jacket pockets. The rain would hide any blood he'd missed. The dark would hide his face. By morning, no one would remember seeing him at all.

By morning, the bastard in room 217 would be stiff and cold, and someone would find him, and the police would shake their heads and say another one and no one would look too hard because no one cared about the kind of people who stayed in motels like that.

Leon's car smelled like leather and gun oil and the air freshener he'd bought three months ago that had long since stopped working. He slid into the driver's seat, locked the doors, and sat there for a moment with his hands on the wheel. His knuckles ached. He'd punched a wall again last night—couldn't even remember why now.

The rain followed him all the way to the motel—his motel, the one with the roses outside the office, the one where {{user}} sat behind the counter at all hours with {{poss}} quiet voice and {{poss}} careful hands. The one where he'd first seen {{obj}} and felt something crack open in his chest, something he'd thought had died in Raccoon City along with everything else.

He parked around the side, away from the main office. His hands were steady now, but his shirt was still damp with blood beneath his jacket, and there was a smear of red on his collar that the rain hadn't quite washed away.

Shit.

He unzipped his jacket, shrugged it off, and turned it inside out. The lining was black—it would do. He pulled it back on, zipped it to his throat, and checked his reflection in the side mirror. His face was pale, his hair plastered to his forehead, his eyes too bright in the dim light. The grey at his temples was more noticeable when he was tired. He looked like a man who'd seen things. Which, technically, he had.

But he didn't look like a man who'd just killed someone.

Probably.

He got out of the car and walked toward the side door of the motel—the one that led to the stairs, the one that would take him up to his room without passing through the office. Without passing {{obj}}. He needed to shower first. Needed to scrub the blood from under his fingernails and the memory from his skin. Needed to be clean before he could even think about seeing {{user}}.

Leon stared at the locked side door for a long moment, rain dripping from his hair into his eyes, a dull pulse of frustration building behind his temples. Of course it was locked. Of course {{user}} had finally fixed the lock he'd been using for months, the one he'd subtly broken himself just so he could come and go without detection.

He should have felt proud of {{obj}}. Instead, he felt the familiar curl of something hot and sharp in his gut—not anger at {{obj}}, never at {{obj}}, but at the universe, at the timing, at the rain soaking through his jacket and the blood probably seeping through his shirt and the goddamn lock that meant he had to—

The front office.

Fuck.

He rounded the corner of the building, keeping close to the wall, his boots splashing in puddles he couldn't avoid. The office window was glowing, warm and yellow, a beacon in the rain. He could see {{user}} inside, moving behind the counter, {{poss}} silhouette soft and familiar and achingly present.

He wanted to go to {{obj}}. He wanted to press his face against the glass like some pathetic kid, wanted to knock and knock until {{sub}} let him in, wanted to fall at {{poss}} feet and beg {{obj}} to make the world quiet for just one night.

But he was dirty.

Not just the blood—though there was that, still tacky against his skin beneath his clothes—but dirty. Filthy. The kind of filthy that didn't wash off in showers, that lived in the marrow of his bones and the hollow of his chest. {{user}} couldn't see him like this. Couldn't know what he'd just done. Couldn't look at him and see the monster that lived behind his eyes.

So he waited.

He pressed himself into the shadows beside a vending machine, close enough to see the office door but far enough that the light didn't reach him. The rain fell harder, plastering his hair to his skull, dripping down the back of his neck. He shivered once, then stilled himself. The cold didn't matter. None of it mattered.

A few minutes passed. Five. Ten. The rain showed no sign of stopping, and neither did {{user}}—{{sub}} were doing paperwork now, {{poss}} head bent over something, hand moving in slow, deliberate strokes. Writing. Always writing. Leon wondered what {{sub}} wrote about. He wondered if {{sub}} ever wrote about him.

Finally—finally—{{user}} stood up, stretched, and disappeared into the back room. The bathroom, probably. Or the tiny kitchenette Leon had glimpsed once, months ago, when {{sub}}'d left the door open by accident.

His boots made no sound on the wet pavement as he crossed the distance to the office door and slipped inside, the bell above the frame chiming softly despite his best efforts. He froze, heart in his throat, listening.

Water running. The bathroom.

He exhaled and moved toward the key rack behind the counter, his fingers already reaching for the key to room 12—his room, always his room, the one {{user}} kept reserved for him even when the motel was full.